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What is the Theological Meaning of Creation in Scripture?

Last week I began reflecting on David Fergusson’s recent book Creationby giving some thoughts on the logical connection of a historical Adam and Eve to the rest of Christian theology. Fergusson himself devotes only about a page to this question, culminating with “We can have redemption in Christ without a fall in the historical Adam—the other New Testament writers [aside from Paul] seem to have little difficulty attesting Christ as savior without reference to the fall story. It is sufficient that we are all sinners as illustrated in the Genesis 3 story, and that the scope of Christ’s work is universal” (p. 11). So if that’s not what the creation story is designed to communicate, what is it about?

Fergusson’s first chapter is titled “Creation in Scripture”. He says there are four important features of the doctrine of creation that emerge from the Bible:

The God-world relationship is distinguished from other rival views. According to the Bible, the world is not divine or otherwise an emanation from God. It comes into being by the will and word of God.

The world is good, and its goodness is not limited to a pre-fall Eden. While this generates a problem of evil for our understanding, the Bible seems to embrace this problem rather than diminishing either the power of God or the goodness of the world.

Building further on this, creation is imperfect and incomplete. The world is only the first of God’s creative works, setting in motion a narrative that has its focus on the coming of Jesus Christ.

The making of the world is a cause of celebration and praise.

The first point is one of the important factors (by no means the only one) often used to explain why modern science arose in the Christian West. The argument goes that in other religious cultures, the physical world was thought to be necessary emanation from the divine, and therefore the way to understand it was just by thinking about it from your ivory tower. Christians, however, believed that God was free to create however he wanted, and therefore if you want to know about the world, you had to actually go out into it and observe the way it in fact operates. Scholars like Reijer Hooykaas and Stanley Jaki made quite a lot of this argument a few decades ago. We should defer to our History Fellow, Ted Davis, to sort out the viability of that thesis, but I’ll say for myself that I’m more persuaded by the recent arguments of Stephen Gaukroger. In his massive book, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1210-1685 (only the first volume of a series), Gaukroger develops the thesis in rigorous detail that Christianity played a central role in the development of “natural philosophy” by legitimizing it as her “handmaiden.” The theologians of the Middle Ages saw utility in science, and that gave scientists a place at the table of learning.

Fergusson’s second and third points go together to counteract a couple of common misperceptions people have about the doctrine of creation. Goodness is not the same as perfection. Scripture’s witness is that God created the world good, not perfect. My friends who are more adept than I at ancient Hebrew tell me that there is a different word for “perfect” that would have been used had that been the intention. Fergusson notes that neither of the creation stories (Genesis 1 and 2) presents a perfect world. Genesis 1 has the waters of the deep as a symbol of disorder, and the created humans are charged to subdue this newly created earth. This is before any hint of a fall, and the only conclusion to be drawn from this is that God did not create things how he intended them to ultimately be. And in Genesis 2, the presence of the serpent shows that from the very beginning, the created order is threatened by destructive forces.

So, God’s creative work is ongoing. This helps to counter another common misperception about the doctrine of creation: giving a scientific explanation renders God obsolete (or at best confines his work to starting things off). We addressed this concern in our short BioLogos Basics video, “Is God the Creator?” showing how we have no problem saying God is involved in other things for which we have very robust scientific descriptions (like the creation of Hawaiian Islands and human babies). Fergusson notes that the Hebrew word bara is used in Genesis for the creative work of God at the beginning, but it is also used for God’s salvific actions throughout history; for example, creating the new heavens and earth as described in Isaiah 65 (p. 4). God created, is creating, and will create. Scientific explanations don’t challenge this theological truth.

Of course there is still the challenge of integrating our theological discourse about God as Creator and the scientific discourse that describes some of the same events (like the creation of the human species). Rejecting the science might give us the feeling of a temporary victory and a solution to the challenge. But that strategy ultimately pits the Word of God against the Works of God and creates a much bigger problem for any coherent doctrine of creation. So we continue the hard work of understanding God’s two books.

As for Fergusson’s fourth point, let’s give the Psalmist the final word:

Praise the Lord.Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights above.Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his heavenly hosts.Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars.Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies.Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at his command they were created, and he established them for ever and ever— he issued a decree that will never pass away.Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and women, old men and children.Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor is above the earth and the heavens.And he has raised up for his people a horn, the praise of all his faithful servants, of Israel, the people close to his heart.Praise the Lord.

-Psalm 148

Next time we’ll move on to Fergusson’s chapter two, “Creatio Ex Nihilo”.

Notes

Citations

Stump, J. (2015, October 21). What is the Theological Meaning of Creation in Scripture?Retrieved March 19, 2018, from /blogs/jim-stump-faith-and-science-seeking-understanding/what-is-the-theological-meaning-of-creation-in-scripture

About the Author

Jim Stump is Senior Editor at BioLogos. As such he oversees the development of new content and curates existing content for the website and print materials. Jim has a PhD in philosophy from Boston University and was formerly a philosophy professor and academic administrator. He has authored Science and Christianity: An Introduction to the Issues (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) and edited Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (Zondervan 2017). Other books he has co-authored or co-edited include: Christian Thought: A Historical Introduction (Routledge, 2010, 2016), The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), How I Changed My Mind About Evolution (InterVarsity, 2016), and Old Earth or Evolutionary Creation: Discussing Origins with Reasons to Believe and BioLogos (InterVarsity, 2017).

"What kind of evidence would somebody need to have in order to be rationally compelled to say that an event was a miracle? That person would have to know that this event could not possibly be explained by future science. But not only is such a belief unwarranted, it’s also bad for future science to believe it."

These provocative words are written by Princeton philosopher Hans Halvorson (a Christian), in an article that itself provoked some good discussion when we posted it last week.

Check out the full article (link in comments), and then respond to the quote above. Does calling something a "miracle" put it in danger of being debunked by future scientific advances? Is there a different way of thinking about the concept of a miracle, that might satisfy his concerns? Feel free to discuss below. ... See moreSee less

Hard for me to see that the Incarnation is not a miracle. For others , God could be working on a quantum level?? But does the latter fall into”God of the Gaps?”

5 hours ago · 1

Amen🌀 Jesus doesn't care about Alabama Crimson Tide 🏈 football. Instead, He loves 🌀 Spring and the start of ⚾ baseball season. That's why He started His own story, "In the Big inning..." Just watch 🌀 His wind-up! You need to start reading your 📖 Bible!

3 hours ago

One thing for sure, it is more a philosophical question than a religious one.

7 hours ago · 2

Great article. In answer to you question about a different way of thinking about miracles that would "satisfy his concern", to me it would make sense to explain a miracle in terms of something that everyone (religious and non-religious alike) would have no explanation for, given our current understanding of science.

Science will never describe the full expanse of reality. Science is not geared to that end. This is basic knowledge.
Reason is the handmaiden of faith because faith takes us where reason cannot go. As such, the only thing that will ever describe the fill expanse of reality is faith supernaturally given by God, i.e. God graciously enlightening the intellect. Reason gives way to faith because reason is limited in its capacity to describe reality.
This is not to say reason is not essential. It is the handmaiden of faith because it is a true and good servant to faith. As such faith and reason never contradict, but faith does transcend reason.

10 hours ago · 5

I'm tired of these types of questions constantly being proposed. It was not a scientist who discovered that dead human beings do not rise from the dead (which is different than Jesus resurrection) it was simple human experience. Therefore, the question is rather silly to ask. My first reply is to ask: who cares if Jesus resurrection contradicts science? My second reply is to make the observation that this question is phrased in such a way that science is presupposed as the final arbiter of truth claims like the resurrection of Jesus. Thirdly, how exactly could scientists study the resurrection of Jesus? Scripture tells us that God raised Jesus from the dead. Can science study this claim? Fourth, it would be one thing to subject the resurrection to some sort of scientific investigation ( I know not what or how) and a completely different thing to study what the resurrection of Jesus means for me or you personally. It seems Biologos is in need of some good theologians and philosophers to add to this conversation. Finally, this question smacks of a form of Evidentialism that would make faith subject to the vagarities of evidence. In the end I have to affirm that it matters little to me if the resurrection of Jesus did contradict science. On another note, one could ask: whose "science" and which scientists?

3 hours ago · 1

Exactly so.

11 hours ago · 1

Mmmmmm, I would say that a resurrection is contradictory to observed evidence, but that's fine. A God that is truly supernatural would act supernaturally at times. Although, I suppose God could whip up a truly natural Star Trek hypospray to overcome the decay process and relaunch the body's systems.